


wasn't much, just everything

by inlovewithnight



Category: Captain Marvel (2019)
Genre: F/F, Memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-13
Updated: 2019-03-13
Packaged: 2019-11-16 11:05:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18093110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlovewithnight/pseuds/inlovewithnight
Summary: Maria has a few things of Carol's that she kept for herself.





	wasn't much, just everything

There are three pictures of Carol that Maria didn’t give to Monica to keep with the rest of the mementos in the box. They’re Polaroids, taken over a window of about a year, as best Maria can remember. The camera got broken a few months before Carol took the plane up with Lawson.

Maria keeps them in an envelope, tucked away at the back of one of her dresser drawers so she only comes across it when she weeds out her clothes or really, really runs out of laundry.

The first one is of both of them, actually. They’re doing one-armed pushups, head to head, their left hands clenched behind their backs while they crank out the reps. Maria is either grimacing or grinning—she can’t quite remember, and the angle of the photo isn’t clear. Carol is laughing, though. Wisps of hair are coming free from behind her ears, and she’s laughing.

Lawson might have taken the photo, actually. It was definitely taken on base, and the three of them stuck together a lot.

The second one is of a napkin, lying on the table in Maria’s quarters. There’s a lipstick print on it, and the words _Love ya!_ scrawled in pen. The Polaroid doesn’t capture the color of the lipstick quite right; Maria remembers that it was a really garish, awful pink. Even Carol could only barely make it work. But she liked it, she wore it every night they went out to Pancho’s.

Maria kept napkins in her car, and made Carol wipe the lipstick off on their way back to housing, those nights. The napkin in the photo wasn’t from that, though; it was kissing off excess after she put the makeup on, not wiping it away. Carol came over to get ready at Maria’s place, only for Maria’s mother to meet her at the door. Surprise family visit. Secrets still being kept.

Carol handled it easy and breezy, of course. Did her makeup in the kitchen, kissed the napkin and wrote her little note. She slipped it in Maria’s hand on her way out the door, and Maria took a picture of it, because she knew that napkins ripped and fell apart and got thrown away. Easier to take care of a Polaroid.

The third one is Carol lying on her back in Maria’s bed, one arm flung over her eyes, furrowed forehead just partially visible as she fights off the sunlight. It was maybe the only time Maria ever woke up before her, and that was only because that morning Carol had a hangover that could drop a grizzly bear.

In the picture, Carol’s wearing a pair of Maria’s cowboy boots and a pair of white cotton briefs. She’s topless, her free arm lying loosely across her chest. For the life of her, Maria can’t remember how Carol managed to take her jeans off and then put the boots back on and fall asleep that way. She can’t argue with the photo, though. Or her memory.

(Carol lifting her arm enough to peer at Maria with one eye, then groaning and rolling over face-down on the bed. “Don’t make fun of me.” 

Maria laughing and walking over to sit down on the edge of the mattress. “You did it to yourself.”

“I know, but you don’t have to make fun of me!”

Maria walking her fingers up the back of Carol’s thigh, watching them make divots in the pale skin, waiting for Carol to reach for her or pull away.

Carol reaching for her. Whining about her head, but reaching for Maria, and everything becoming okay.) 

__

Maria has lived on the memories for six years. Now she’s going to have to do it again, for who knows how long.

__

She wishes she still had that Polaroid camera, to grab pictures of Carol in the little scrap of time they had when she was _Carol_ , her memories mostly in place, or at least the ones Maria needed her to have. She would have taken a thousand more pictures—Carol smiling down at Monica, Carol facing down enemies real or suspected in that stance that said it would take a semi truck to move her, Carol laughing with Fury in the kitchen. Carol holding that damn not-cat and staring off into the sky.

__

Maria takes the coffee mug that Carol drank from and wipes it out with a wet dishtowel, careful not to disturb where Carol’s lips would have touched the rim. She puts it in her drawer with the envelope of pictures, then folds up the Nine Inch Nails t-shirt and puts it with them, too. Maybe she should let Monica keep those with the rest of her box of memories, but Maria just—she needs them, that’s all. She needs them for herself.

__

She still has the cowboy boots, too, standing in her closet. They’re dusty. They haven’t been worn in years.

__


End file.
